Reinvent the means of control

“We need control systems that shape rather than stifle human contribution.”

Traditional control systems ensure high levels of compliance but do so at the expense of employee creativity, entrepreneurship, and engagement. To overcome the discipline-versus-innovation trade-off, tomorrow’s control systems will need to rely more on peer review and less on top-down supervision. They must leverage the power of shared values and aspirations while loosening the straitjacket of rules and strictures. The goal: organizations filled with people whose motivation and discipline comes from within.

Reinvent the means of control

“We need control systems that shape rather than stifle human contribution.”

Traditional control systems ensure high levels of compliance but do so at the expense of employee creativity, entrepreneurship, and engagement. To overcome the discipline-versus-innovation trade-off, tomorrow’s control systems will need to rely more on peer review and less on top-down supervision. They must leverage the power of shared values and aspirations while loosening the straitjacket of rules and strictures. The goal: organizations filled with people whose motivation and discipline comes from within.

The Morning Star Company is one of the world’s leading processors of tomatoes—and one of the most progressive models of a self-managed enterprise we’ve seen. In this Mashup session, Paul Green, the co-founder of the Self-Management Institute and, until recently, Morning Star’s head of development, describes the company’s extraordinary—and extraordinarily effective—approach to replacing manager-management with peer- and self-management.

The founders of TopCoder and Tongal, the world's largest communities of talented and impassioned software developers and digital creators, make the case for the value of “creative populism,” share the new rules for activating, enlisting, and organizing talent in the social, mobile and digital age—and unpack their disruptive models for the future of work and value creation.